Courageous Women Take Center Stage In Harrowing Tale From World War Ii

March 8, 1993|By TOM JICHA, TV/Radio Writer

A movie about women in prison, a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, no less, and it wasn`t on during the February sweeps?

Did NBC`s schedulers screw up again?

Not really.

Silent Cries, tonight`s NBC movie, is about women in a Japanese POW camp, but it`s not one of those movies.

To be sure, the Japanese captors are guilty of breathtaking savagery. The atrocities, however, are not presented in a sensational manner or to titillate. Put it this way: There is not even a hint of rape and this is a drama that, while fictional, is grounded in a composite of actual events.

Silent Cries is based on the historical novel Guests of the Emperor, the designation the Japanese gave to the women they interred. Under the Japanese value system, only men could be considered prisoners of war. The women were considered so lowly and insignificant that the dregs and misfits of the Japanese army were assigned to oversee them, which compounded their woes.

But the barbaric behavior of the Japanese, one sadistic commander in particular, really isn`t the focus of the film. The bigger story is the perseverance and determination to survive against overwhelming odds. The tougher the Japanese make it on the women, the more ingenious they become.

A similar saga involving men would in all likelihood involve heroic attempts to thwart or sabotage the enemy. The women in this film quickly come to realize the futility, even irresponsibility, of trying to do that of which they are incapable.

Their defiance is manifested by maintaining their dignity and preserving life as best they can.

Silent Cries opens in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The mostly British subjects in Singapore are living blissfully ignorant to their imminent peril. The feeling is they are immune from attack because of geographic isolation; water on three sides, forbidding terrain on the fourth. They didn`t allow for the fanaticism and resourcefulness of the Emperor`s forces.

One mother, Hazel, scolds her daughter Roberta for wanting to leave Singapore, teasing her that she just wants to get home to Britian to prepare for her impending wedding.

By the time they come to appreciate the jeopardy they are in, the Japanese are all over them. The ramifications of their miscalculation are horrendous.

The genders are immediately segregated and the women are herded into a camp in Sumatra, where the slightest transgression is met with ferocious, often lethal, violence. Disobedience by one is punished as a collective offense. The Japanese, it is pointed out, are not parties to the Geneva Convention.

Among those imprisoned with Hazel and Roberta are a sassy Aussie named Dinky, who comes to serve as the self-designated morale officer, and Peggy Sutherland, a distinguished author who must conceal her identity because her anti-Japanese writings have put her on the Emperor`s snit list.

Gena Rowlands, as Peggy, heads an extremely effective ensemble, all of whom offer understated but compelling performances. Most prominent are Chloe Webb as Dinky, Annabeth Gish as Hazel and Gail Strickland as Roberta.

There`s even a brief comic element as one woman recognizes another as ``the whore`` who stole her husband. Subsequent events strip the humor from the situation.

Despite the threat of instant death if what she is up to is discovered, Peggy keeps diaries of the war years to ensure that the women and their ordeal will not be overlooked by history. It is efforts like hers that led to works such as Guests of the Emperor.

Peggy`s diaries record heart-wrenching stories. Before they are liberated, more than half the women will die, some murdered in cold blood. Mistreatment, disease and malnutrition take such a toll that even those who survive would barely be recognized by those who knew them before the war.

In the spirit of the era of heightened sensitivity and political correctness, there is an attempt to revise history and exonerate the Japanese just before the final credits. A Japanese commander tells the survivors, ``Do not judge us all by one who has no honor.``